Battle of the Sun by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page A

of the broken jar, in among the jagged pieces, lying like a moth the size of a man’s hand, was the Eyebat.
    Its two evil eyes swivelled round.
    ‘Catch it!’ yelled Wedge, lunging forward on his one leg, but at that split second, the Eyebat propelled itself upwards in a great whirr, and hurtled around the room so fast that no one could follow it.
    Screaming with fright, Anselm and Peter hid under the table with Crispis. Robert grabbed a net and tried to grab at the thing, like a butterfly. Jack scrambled to his feet, and was at once knocked down again by a furious Wedge, purple in the face.
    The Eyebat dipped, dived, then settled itself nastily in the rafters, its shining evil eyes looking down.
    Wedge stared around the room, swiping randomly at the cowering boys. He pushed the broken pieces of the jar with his iron-booted toe. Then he put his half-face very close to Jack and snarled, ‘Oh, you are in trouble, oh, you are in trouble, my fine lad. Eyebat out, is he? Well indeed!’
    Wedge looked up to the rafters. The Eyebat looked down from the rafters. Wedge laughed his horrid half-laugh with his horrid half-mouth.
    ‘What will the Magus say? This is thunder and strife.’
    Mistress Split came forward. ‘The boy will pay with his life – ha ha ha ha.’
    The Eyebat flapped a little on its beam.
    ‘Be gone, you boys!’ said Wedge. ‘The Magus must be brought here!’
    ‘Live in fear!’ said Mistress Split, laughing at the terror of the boys. ‘Live in fear!’
    As the boys filed out, Wedge grabbed Jack by the shoulder and forced him round towards Mistress Split. ‘Here’s the trouble. Here’s all the trouble in one bag of skin and bones. Here’s the one that’s starving us, my dear!’
    ‘Then punish him, my dear!’ said Mistress Split.
    ‘If we shan’t eat, neither shall he!’
    ‘Let him see what it’s like to go hungry!’
    Wedge let Jack go, and Jack ran, rubbing his shoulder, towards the refectory.
    When he got there, the boys were eating in silence, but there was no place set for Jack. He reached for a mug of water and at that second Mistress Split’s sword cleaved the mug in two, and the water spilled out over the table and floor.
    ‘Not a drop!’ she said. ‘Not a drip!’
    And then, she dropped her sword as fast as she dropped her evil expression. A little black dog came galloping through the door, paws underneath him, falling over. Jack nearly cried out with joy, and just managed to close his mouth, as Mistress Split intercepted the dog, and swooped him up on her arm, where he licked her half-face.
    ‘My love my dove, my love my dove, my love my dove,’ and on she went, loving and doving, until Wedge came in, furious and hot-faced.
    ‘Halves halves, halves!’ he shouted. ‘All is halves!’ and he tried to pull the dog from Mistress Split, who bared her teeth at him.
    ‘Shall not split him, he’s a Born not a Bottle, splitting it kills it, as well you know!’
    ‘As well YOU know,’ snarled Wedge in her face. ‘Dead or alive makes no odds, halves is halves to us.’
    But Mistress Split held the dog up high on her one arm in her one hand, and Wedge stumped off, reeking rage.
    That’s my dog! thought Jack, and then he had an even bigger shock because a new servant woman, all in grey, came in with a pitcher of soup, and she looked straight at Jack, and she was his mother . . .

T he Magus was in the laboratory. He was standing examining the pieces of the Eyebat’s heavy glass jar. Wedge was standing with him.
    ‘Jackster did it, Master, not Wedge, I swear on the Queen’s life, not Wedge.’
    ‘Where is the Eyebat now?’
    ‘Behind you,’ said Wedge, humbly, though it did cross his half a brain for half a second that his master was all-powerful and should know where the Eyebat lurked.
    The Magus turned. Yes, there was the Eyebat, watching from its perch. ‘It is not so simple to return it as it was to free it,’ said the Magus. ‘While it is in the laboratory there is